Copyright The Hollywood Reporter
Tubi, the Fox-owned free streaming platform, has inked a deal with Hartbeat, Kevin Hart’s production studio, to bring four feature films from top YouTube creators, including Kinigra Deon and DC Young Fly, Chico Bean, and Karlous Miller of the 85 South Show, to its service next year. The first two films in the slate are Deon’s Sundown, a supernatural thriller, written, directed by and starring the creator, which “follows a group of Black college friends who take a wrong turn into a racially hostile town where local myths turn terrifyingly real”; and 85 South: Dead End, a satirical horror-comedy from the group “about a Southern road trip gone off the rails in a mysteriously offbeat town where no one ever leaves.” The other two films in the initial slate will be announced at a later date. “A big part of what we talked about doing is creating a bridge for creators to Hollywood, while allowing them to maintain their authenticity and creative freedom, and Hartbeat really shared a similar vision as they were starting to think about working with creators,” says Rich Bloom, GM of creator programs & executive vp of business development at Tubi, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Tubi has made working with creators a strategic priority, launching a Tubi for creators program earlier this year, licensing libraries of their content, and casting them in originals. “We will certainly will be doing series as well,” Bloom says. “But it’s really a belief in creators that they’re the emerging storytellers of today. These are creators that are already having success making long form content. You know, a lot of these creators are already making episodic content that’s 30, 45, minutes or longer. They have the engaged fans, they have the skill set, and we feel like it’s a natural evolution for them.” In the case of Deon, her film has been a longtime coming, as she recalled to THR in its cover story about YouTube earlier this month. She is building an entire studio operation in Alabama, and the film is a test case for what is possible in that facility. “What I’m hoping for when we release that movie is that it sends a widespread message that you don’t have to wait to release something that you’re passionate about. You just have to do it,” Deon said at the time. “We already had a lot of proven success with her content on the platform, so it was a natural fit for us to take the step of supporting her, to take this leap into creating a feature film,” Bloom says. “For us, our partnerships with creators are about doing real partnerships,” says Jeff Clanagan, president and chief distribution officer at Hartbeat. “We’re not treating them as talent, we’re treating them as partners on these projects. So they’re side by side with us in the process.” While Hartbeat is known for its comedy chops, Clanagan says that its creator partnerships are bringing it exposure to other genres, like horror, that it has not traditionally played in. The initial four-film slate is seen as just the start. “We’re starting out with four, but we’re actually already having discussions about potentially expanding the slate. So I think those will happen naturally,” he says. “I want to get to a point where we’re probably doing six a year, so one every other month.” “We’re seeing this as the road in terms of direct to consumer, in terms of building our direct consumer business, but also building out our original IP business around feature films,” he adds. “We think this is the path for us to really build our library.” And Tubi, with its vast audience, free availability, and a desire to work with top creators, has emerged as a natural landing pad for that content. “Part of the appeal of creators working with us, including on projects like this, is the combination of the size of our audience — we have over 100 million monthly active users, we have this younger, really diverse audience, and so that’s very hard to reach and unique — and then on top of that, we’re completely open and free,” Bloom says. “They have a huge audience that is aligned with the audience that we’re going after, so they were a natural fit,” Clanagan adds.
